Roy Hawkins and Rick Darnell wrote it in 1951. Roy recorded it that year with moderate success on the Rhythm and Blues Charts — long before R&B became some throat and lung exercises in excess. Then B.B. King took it to the top and then off the charts with his 1969 cover.

When i hear it, and that is frequently because i find it and play it, i often think it was likely what a number of dear women in my life thought of me.

This morning when i played it again, i wasn’t thinking about lost loves. i was thinking about how the short sentence applies to aging — Remember, “sentence” has two basic meanings.

You see, up until i finally gave in and accepted i wasn’t young anymore, i was a thrill seeker, even though i didn’t think of myself in that way. i was looking to be thrilled, awed, blown away. i wanted to dance the fastest dance. I wanted to drive the fastest car (and there could have been others, but the car Daddy bought when i was rolling into 16, the 1958 Pontiac Star Chief with the biggest engine GM built underneath three two-barrel carburetors was damn close to the fastest on the road). i wanted to date the prettiest girls. As a linebacker, i wanted to take on the biggest, meanest runner. I wanted watch the raciest movies. I wanted to go to the biggest concert, watch the loudest and biggest fireworks show, and live in the biggest cites, and be those cities’ biggest star.

i was looking for the thrill of it all.

i continued looking for thrills, traveling the furthest i could go, seeing all the wonders that i saw, living wild most of the time until i grew up (or at least until i thought i grew up: there are moments when i am still not sure if i have actually grown up, you know).

This morning, i awoke. I did not rise from the bed as is my habit. i was awake, wide awake. i just felt comfortable, in neutral, no pressure, just lying there, quiet, peace, calm. Nowadays, we only turn on the heat in our house for a couple of hours to knock the chill off after we wake up. At night, the heat is off. This time of year, it will often get down to the low 60’s in the house. We like it that way, enjoy fresh air, like covers while we sleep. It was around 61 when i awoke. But it wasn’t the chill that kept me there in bed. i get up in that kind of chill until late March when Southwest corner real weather marches in and claims the next four months. My continuing to lie there was…well, it wasn’t looking for thrills.

Now i look for comfort, quieter music, walking not running, golf not football, old friends not seeking new ones, memories warm, peace not clamor. i revel in how Maureen’s and my relationship has matured, gotten deeper, richer. Politics, news have been excluded. i do not wish to be amazed at what children do now-a-days. Hell, i don’t even want to know what so called adults are doing.

i am in a comfortable place.

A couple of years ago, i told someone special and important to me that Peggy Lee had nailed it. Actually, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller nailed it. They wrote the song, “Is That All There Is,?” that Peggy sang nailing it — amazingly, these two are the guys who wrote most of the Coaster’s hits like “Searching,” “Young Blood,” and perhaps my favorite, “Idol With the Golden Head.”

But i was wrong about that song and Peggy and Jerry and Mike nailing it. For me, the nail that was hit was created by Hawkins and Darnell.

The song is pure, pure blues, almost agony triumphed, sad. For an old man, the thrill being gone is not a bad thing.

It was dark, significantly before sunrise, even way before first light, when i went out this morning. Clouds had claimed the sky. It would have been a perfect night for striped bass fishing back on Center Hill Lake. The shad minnows were more attracted to the Coleman lanterns hanging off the gunwale of the boat in the dark with no moon and stars to lighten the sky. And where the shad minnows moved, so did the striped bass.

It is Tuesday. That’s trash day around here. i went out to the side yard next to the garage, opened the gate, and began moving the three bins to the street. Around here, you have a bin for yard waste, one for recycled things, and one for trash. i don’t do inane arguing about global warning. To me, it makes no difference if it is or isn’t happening. Recycling, reusing yard waste for mulch and other purposes, and reducing our trash output is good for our environment regardless of who wins the inane argument.

i line two bins up by the open garage door and take the yard waste bin to the street. i cross the street to the widow’s side yard and move her bins to the street before filling my other two bins and repeating the process at our house. You see, some guy began moving a next-door neighbor’s bins out to the street after she got a divorce. Now, it is almost a race for neighbors to move other neighbor’s bins out or back in after pickup in the houses near the end of the cul-de-sac.

This morning, as i moved the first of my bins to the front, i remembered moving trash cans before they had bins in another place in another time in a world far away.

This was after my hometown public works took Jake Hughes means of income away by buying the new trucks and providing trash services, garbage only, to the citizens. Jake stopped coming to our house in his mule drawn wagon with four car wheels to go to the back of our garage. That garage was on one side of the back yard, not in the front for most homes today. The back is where i prefer garages for reasons i may someday reveal. Jake would take our garbage can to the street, dump the contents into his wagon bed, return the can to the back of the garage, and leave with our garbage.

After that, a household member had to take the garbage to the front, which normally was the oldest male child, a.k.a. me. My new requirement of garbage dumping coincided with my going to a movie showing downtown in 1957. The movie starred Michael Landon way before he was “Little Joe Cartrwight” in “Bonanza.” The event was on a summer Monday night, two days for garbage pickup, i think. It certainly wasn’t on Saturday because those afternoons still were reserved for Westerns.

The movie was “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” For those of you who might be too young to remember, that movie was not a prequel of “Teen Wolf,” the comedy another Michael named Fox made in 1985. That was a comedy. “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” might have been silly by today’s standards, but it was a horror movie for that day and time. That night, i had nightmares about the movie.

Now all of this may seem unrelated, but the next evening after sunset, it was time for me to take out the garbage. Opening the back door of our house, i found a full moon lighting the dark.

i paused at the door. i was afraid, very afraid, there could be a werewolf lurking behind the garage, waiting to kill me with those terrible fangs. i realized such fear was self-inflicted, cursed my nightmare, and walked to the back of the garage. i admit the fear did not go away until i had deposited the garbage can by the street and returned inside.

Here, i was to make some philosophical comments about fear and hate and all sorts of stuff. But i will let it ride.

But this morning, i was never afraid…

…after all, it was cloudy and the full moon is in its waxing crescent phase, nowhere near a full moon.

Ben raised his glass, tilting it momentarily
to greet the stranger entering the bar
sunlight streamed behind the stranger
blazing to obscure any focus
of the stranger  as he turned
toward the rear of the bar,
Ben warned him
do not go in there;
you see, we are not sure what’s beyond
the dark
we can feel it
but
we do not know what it might be
or
shall be
or
even worse, could be
and
there have been several
who dared the dark
and
did not return
so
sit down here at the bar with me
have a whiskey
i prefer mine neat
come on, come on, sit here
Ben pleaded
the stranger, dressed in black
with a black stetson,
paused, turned briefly toward him
before abruptly turning back
toward the dark
and
the stranger passed from the sunlight
into the dark
Ben finished his whiskey
dropped a sawbuck on the bar
rising from his stool
he moved toward the door
and
the sunlight
laughing quietly.

The “Something Older” in the title is me. The “Something New” is not really new but several quotes from Faulkner in Martin J. Dain’s photo essay book, Faulkner’s Yoknawpatawpha County i have possessed since the early 1970’s and take off the shelf and go through every so often just to give me a moment to relax and even mediate a bit:

You must struggle, rise. But in order to rise, you must raise the shadow with you. But you can never lift it to your level. I see that now, which I did not see until I came down here. But escape it you cannot. The curse of the black race is God’s curse. But the curse of the white man is the black man who will be forever God’s chosen own because he once cursed him.

and

from Dilsey, perhaps my favorite Faulkner character, this one from The Sound and the Fury. When i read of Dilsey, i think of Vicey Shavers, the wonderful lady who cared for me when Mother did some part time work from about four years old into my teenage years:

I’ve seed de first en de last,” Dilsey said. “Never you mind me.

“First en last whut?” Frony said.

“Never you mind,” Dilsey said. “I seed de beginnin, en now i sees de endin.”

and:

Then one day the old curse of his fathers, the old haughty ancestral pride based not on any value but on an accident of geography, stemmed not from courage and honor but from wrong and shame, descended to him. He did not recognize it then.

and:

Because man’s hope is in man’s freedom, The basis of the universal truth which the writer speaks is freedom in which to hope, believe, since only in liberty can hope exist — liberty and freedom not given a man as a free gift but as a right and a responsibility to be earned if he deserves it, is worthy of it, is willing to work for it by means of courage and sacrifice, and then to defend it always.

and:

But like i said we was all busy or anyway occupied or at least interested, so we could wait. And sho enough, even waiting ends if you can jest wait long enough.

and:

…fear, like so many evil things, comes mainly out of idleness, if you have something to get into tomorrow morning  you’re too busy to pay much attention to fear. Of course, you have fears, but you have — you don’t have time to take them seriously if you have something to get up and do tomorrow. It don’t matter too much what it is…and if it’s something that you yourself believe is valid…

This post was begun five years ago. i was struggling with what to add and didn’t finish. It was automatically filed as a “draft.” i was cleaning up my files (a never-ending and hopeless endeavor), i ran across it. Reading it this morning, i realized it was a bit bold, if not downright improper, for me to try and add remarks to Faulkner’s quotes. And this morning, it seemed damn close to what i think about where we are, what we might do about it, and how i can live feeling better about me and feeling better about living amongst what we live amongst.

So i deleted references to my seventy-fourth birthday, and let Faulkner’s words speak for themselves as they have spoken to me.

Dain’s book is still in print and available. But if you care not to purchase but would like to look at some awesome photos and read some powerful words, drop by and we can go through the book together and discuss how we feel about it.

One of the many things i’ve done while hopping and hopping around in not-quite careers since i retired (that is actually completed my active duty Navy service, not retired) was as the business manager of a military contracting company, that morphed into parts of other companies three times while i as there just shy of five years. A previous business manager described the job as “selling smoke.” He wasn’t too far off.

Through the aegis of my friend since 1979, Pete Toennies, i joined the bunch after i asked help in finding my brother-in-law a job, which Pete did. i met some folks whom i still hold in high esteem.

There was Bob Ellis, who remains one of the smartest men i’ve known, a retired E3 pilot, who had incredible energy for his job, worked in difficult circumstances to win contracts against impossible odds in spite of some boot lickers between him and top management (and so, that organization finally got rid of him and suffered, losing all sorts of work. Still a terrific friend.

A bunch of other dedicated and talented people too many to list here.

But there’s this guy who was the genius in graphics design. For one contract proposal, Walker turned me into a hologram like Princess Leia. He not only was a multi-graphics wizard, he created magic.

Walker Hicks is more than magic. Like i said, he’s a wizard. He left that company shortly after i left and became the marketing manager, the art director , and the creative art director at Cali Bamboo, primarily a bamboo flooring company. He did this while running a whole bunch of creative projects on his own.

A a bunch of years ago, i was trying to compile a bunch of old 8mm family films into a long DVD. Remembering Walker’s talents i asked him if he could help. Well, Walker didn’t help. He took it on big time. His set up was archaic, capturing the movies running on an old 8mm movie projector on video, turning it into a DVD with music. Remarkable. i gave copies to a bunch of family members for a Christmas gift. They loved them.

This project led to Walker capturing family photos from the late 1800’s into digital images. Once again perfection was achieved.

Then, i began my website. Walker has been there from the beginning. He has done all of the design and graphics. He set up and then instructed me how to use the app for posting my stuff. He has continued to be remarkable in giving me help, patiently going through procedures when improved changes were made, and constantly making it all work.

Walker has become a great friend. His wife Marcie is a beautiful woman, talented in her own right and a success in a number of different ventures including graphic design. Their son Bryton is six months younger than my grandson and a fine talent in volleyball. Their dog Remi is a treat.

Recently when i was at Walker’s working on marketing my book and improving the website, Walker told me of acquiring some equipment to better and more efficiently create videos of old movies. They are an upgrade from the process he used making my DVDs.

If you have a bunch of old family movies and want to have a more permanent version you can watch on your video equipment, i would most strongly recommend you contact Walker. If you don’t believe me, below is a small section of the videos he made for me. These are mostly of my Uncle Bill’s family from Florida, visiting the Smokies with my aunt, Bettye Kate, and i’m betting the filming was done by my Uncle Snooks. The last portion is a goofy guy, Martha and Joe at Christmas. Joe, is the one who looks sort of like Dangerous Dan McGoo with that rifle.

If you would like to contact Walker about your movies or any other potential multi-media projects, i strongly recommend you do. He’s the best.

And he’s a great friend.

Contact Walker:
www.diwhy.life
diwhydotlife@gmail.com